Today’s blast from the past; Glory Dimples and Lard Whistlers!

Let’s do a little window shopping today, shall we? Think we might need a box of Glory Dimples? Or maybe some Kyanize enamel paint to touch up those worn out balls!! Other items of interest: Otter Bait Pail, re-purposed as a ball washer perhaps; and in the right lower corner some cone shaped tees with a cord attached. More Spalding golf balls include, ‘Baby Dimple’ ‘Forty’ and ‘Red Dot.’ I see a Spalding ‘Golf for Girls’ book by Cecil Leitch, buy it here. The wool sweaters look comfy, and how about those fingerless gloves, middle left? Check out the Lard ‘whistler’ perforated shaft irons on display, very very expensive collectible now days.

This image comes to us as a 5×7 glass plate negative, and one of about fourteen I purchased as a set recently, all from Ware Brothers Sporting Goods and Hardware store in Spokane Washington, and 125 Howard St might be the address of our store at the time of these photographs. We can date the image to around 1917-1919 as other pictures in this set have a 1917 wartime Marine recruiting poster, with Red Cross blood donation info, and the perforated shafts were only made until 1919. The book ‘Golf for Girls’ mentioned above was published in 1916.

This slightly blurred image, and the others were probably taken by an amateur, as many are crooked, along with incorrect exposures, or simply not very sharp, either from missed focus or camera jitter as we see here in our golf display. Looks like part of a riot door mechanism to the very right, or maybe it’s for an awning. Who took these pictures? Was it the store owners Son, Daughter or Wife, or friend trying their luck as a photographer? We’ll probably never know, but that person left us with an interesting ‘window’ into the past!